Page 15 of Penalty Box
I nearly jumped out of my skin with the roar that burst out of the locker room.
“That’s what I thought,” my dad went on. “But I need every single one of you dialed in. That means on the iceandoffit.” I felt like he’d added that specifically for Grayson. “No distractions. No attitude. You wear this jersey, you show up. Every. Damn. Day.”
Silence followed.
The good kind. The kind that told me they were hanging onto his every word.
“Captain, get them through travel protocols. Tucker, I want you on room designations.” There was an emphatic ‘Sir, yes, sir’ before my dad continued, “And can someone please remind Calder this isn’t peewee anymore?”
Laughter broke out, and I could just imagine how Mason must’ve been feeling.
“Your stick’s not gonna carry you if your brain’s still back in high school.” My dad had singled him out even more, which made it worse.
“My brain’s here, Coach.” Mason sounded disheartened but determined.
It was all I needed to hear. They were wrapping up, and I quickly slipped away before someone noticed me hanging around. Especially Dad.
My boots squeaked faintly on the polished concrete as I ducked around the corner, and made for the east side of the arena. Carter, the concessions worker who had an annoying crush on me, appeared out of nowhere. He was in a hurry, and almost crashed into me with his balancing tower of half-crushed popcorn bags and a tub of luminescent orange nacho cheese.
“Whoa! Don’t you know it’s bad luck to spill the sacred snack sauce?”he said with a goofy grin.
“It’ll be better than actually eating it,” I muttered, sidestepping the nuclear cheese. “They use that to strip the paint in here when they run out of the other stuff.”
He gave me a hardened look of sympathy. “The sooner you embrace the institution of gourmet processed food, the happier you’ll be.”
“The only thing I’ll be embracing is violent food poisoning.”
He laughed, then gestured toward the empty rink. “You up for a partner tonight?”
“Why? Is Keanu Reeves here?”
Somehow, with his arms full, he managed to dip a pinky finger into the ghastly sauce and make direct eye contact with me as he sucked it off. Slowly.
I couldn’t drag my eyes from it. As it was happening, I knew I’d just unlocked new nightmare fuel, but I could not look away.
“I know you keep shooting me down because you’re afraid you’ll fall in love with me on the ice. Afraid you can’t handle all of this.”
I flipped him off without looking back, but I was smiling. I would never date Carter in a billion years, but we had one thing in common: we were both peons in the arena, doing everyone else’s bidding.
The place was quiet now. Everyone had either gone home or was about to. I took the long way around, past the equipment cages and empty water bottle bins, until the hallway opened up into the main rink.
The lights were dimmed but not out. Enough to see the ice glinting under the overheads. Enough to feel like the world had narrowed to just me and the sound of my blades carving into the frozen ground.
I pulled my gloves tighter, stepped through the rink door, and let the familiar cold wrap around me like armor. My dad was proud of me, and encouraged me in everything I wanted to do. But I knew he would’ve been prouder and more encouraging if I’d turned out to be a pro skater. It was one of those things we accepted and never spoke about, but the faint ghost of it lingered in the background of our conversations.
Which is why he didn’t know I did this from time to time. I think a part of me was scared he might take my love of skating as something else, and I didn’t have the heart to crush his dreams twice.
This wasn’t about practice, or exercise. This time wasmine.
Skating late at night, when everything was still… It was the one time I felt most like myself in this place filled with testosterone and pressure and noise. No one to impress, and no name to live up to. Just the sound of my breath and my blades scraping the ice.
I pushed off, letting the chill kiss my cheeks as I crossed from one end of the rink to the other. The boards blurred past me, the ice beneath my skates smooth and ready.
My dad’s pep talk to the team wasn’t just a coaching note. It was a warning. He didn’t want anything standing between his players and the cup, especially after what happened last season.
If he ever found out about the way Mason had been hanging around me, and the way he’d beenlookingat me…
It wasn’t fair. I didn’t want him to look at me that way, but I liked it. A lot.
